Alfredo Cruz After The Trial Of Jeanine Nicarico

February 23, 1983 a man walked into a house with no good intention but to burglarize it. Home during all this was Jeanine Nicarico who was home alone resting because she had the flu. She was taken from her home and raped two days later she was found dead. Jeanine was only 10 years old. The only clue left at the crime scene was a boot print.

There was a 10,000 reward to anyone who could give any information leading to the capture of the person responsible for this horrific crime. To a man like Rolando Cruz that kind of reward seemed amusing. A known gang member looking for a quick way to make money. Cruz gave the police a false confession in hope of getting the reward money. In doing this Cruz implicated two other people Alejandro Hernandez

After the trial was done a serial killer named Brian Dugan confessed to the murder of Jeanine Nicarico and after that Cruz’s attorney proceeded to reverse the convictions on the grounds of “prejudicial errors by prosecutors and the trial court judge.” The appeal was not granted due to the fact that the attorney didn’t included the fact that Dugan had confessed to the crime. So Cruz was sentenced back to death. Assistant Attorney General Mary Brigid Kenney sent memo stating that the first trial was full of ‘perjured testimony” and “fraudulent investigations by local officials.” After it was ignored she resigned in protest. When the last trial started a lieutenant testified in pretrial that he had a call that two detectives reported that Cruz acknowledge that he committed the crime. However the lieutenant forgot to get his story right and it turned out he was on vacation during the time of this crime. SO there was no way he took that call. After the jury heard this they didn’t take anything the prosecution or the lieutenant seriously. Cruz was released imminently. Furthermore, DNA later proved that Cruz was not responsible for the

Cruz wanted to get a 10,000 reward and ended up doing time because of the way he said things. There is 3 different type of false confessions voluntary, compliant, and internalized. In a voluntary false confession people try and confess to a crime they did not commit. People will voluntary false confess because they like the attention they receive or they feel like they deserve the time of punishment. People have also done voluntary falsely confessed because they are trying to protect someone else. Internalized false confessions are confessions that are acquired from high pressure interrogations that pursued the person to think a certain way and so they confess. The difference is that in this kind of false confessions the person who confessed starts to actually believe they were responsible for the crime they are being accused of. Compliant false confessions are those that people do because “the suspect acquiesces in order to escape from a stressful situation, avoid punishment, or gain a promised or implied reward” This is the type of false confession that Cruz was a part of. He wanted to gain the 10,000 reward so he confessed to something he never did. Cruz thought that he probably wouldn’t have gotten in a lot of trouble and would still get the money that was